Splinter

Fanny Howe

When I was a child

I left my body to look for one

whose image nestles in the center of a wide valley

in perfect isolation wild as Eden

till one became many: spirits in presence

yes workers and no workers up on the tops

of the hills in striped overalls

toy capes puffing

and blue veils as yet unrealized in the sky

I made myself homeless

on purpose for this shinnying up the silence

murky hand-pulls

Gray the first color

many textured clay beneath my feet

my face shining up I lost faith but once

(theology)

*

To stay with me

that path of death was soft

this pump’s emotion

irregular, the sand

blew everywhere

My hands were tied

to one ahead

driving a herd to the edge

(mother)

*

She said I said why

fear there’s nothing to it

at any minute

a stepping out of and into

no columns no firmament

Most of each thing

is whole but contingent

on something about

the nearest one to it

*

Confused but moving

the only stranger I know

has a bed a blanket

a heartfulness famous

for hypocrisy

When she’s not trusting anyone

she leans her crown

upon her hand

snowslop all the way to the grating

before lying down

in a little block of childhood

(one hour for the whole of life)

and her book to record it

*

Was the chasm between her mind

and things

constituted by the intellect’s catalogue

or by the presence of senses

(around her face

objects fall into special functions

tangled loops against concrete walls

moonish nuclear fission capped with molten gold)

or by a sticky subatomic soul

*

See how this being at the neck and bowel

gives the head and groin a taste of hell

that seeps throughout some nervous systems

all senses battered and enflamed

where the soul drinks disabled

and attacks only a she a she can see

who smiles in dreams between clenched hands

sobbing from wanting to win her pity

her in the born-hating

thing she finds there living

*

(Skin is what I she and they see when we see feelings)

Not I but a she-shaped one

over a fluid frame

sized to capture what comes in

agony that heaven doesn’t begin

(to know the soul imprinting is in pain)

*

Short of being nailed but sure of being labeled

now my name is forced now her name is first

into my ear my hearing her not being

here so I will know that this is the hour

when I will have to hear her

named and cringing rise

to the utterance

as my own excruciating presence

*

Very pain it came first

through my eyes

they were so compressed

I could still see

forms that will never be

eliminated and illuminations

and words whose imprint

(branded in agony)

still can’t be interpreted

*

Coal is the first sign of a wreck

that your face may blacken

with bliss of the night

Recognition

You can hide

from whoever is red enough

with force or sex to make you sad

*

The history of the deafeated

Eternal lie

as if to prove

the principle

root of the verb

to falsify

is life

itself an excess

since whoever is

identified

is already buried

while staying still

will show what nothing is

*

So if her skindeep faith

could stay intact

and the original forgery is genetics

and lies increased belief

then was her brain always seeking

the right word

to show that consciousness

does die in places

out of range of her own flesh

Last night I hated her

when I was what she saw in her mirror

and rage can only be appeased by praise

(the winning world backs in on you this way)

*

Does she mean what she says

or do statements form on her lips

Does she mean what she says

or do statements rise to her lips

If it is she then I exist

but if the words are mechanistic

then they can only be read

by reversing images

(the urge to hurt her emerges)

*

She grew to dare herself to murder that which worked to murder her

and murder what was birthed to murder her as I also aspired to murder

slaved and longed to murder her name my own murderous member

This way my always unquiet mind would clear its one evil

would not go to sleep insane

After all should I become a fate like any other not if she can remember

not if she could reconnoiter those faces better faces

now strained through her hate where a woman among them wonders

Why can’t I be like her and hate her

*

(The globe is a brain

It always believed it had no right to life

Its father was its mother

After the blessing came the naming

and accounting for the birthing order)

*

Where I grew life

and died as a little apple

—forget nipping and chewing—

I stopped she dropped

beside an especially long worm

the balls of her feet aching

somewhere out in the rain

one of those rains that blink until dawn

with only the eyes behind them

*

Depressions in the sea

a heavy day

unbecoming anything

after the hope

that drags behind

the one she doesn’t want to see

or waves away

cruelty always more credible

*

The holes in our haloes

widen the higher we die

(a light snowfall

the airport stilled)

And just a pane away from a face

one glove is waving

All our provision gone to waste

*

So the first shall be lost

and the zero before it

and the weight of faithless skin

shall thicken its authority

in a mind fired by a spark

whose intake of breath is automatic

until it isn’t

*

Winter spears

its buds of snow

until a white rose

bleeds gold and trembling

and barely visible

(artificial)

two at a windowpane